Vol
by notwithoutmyradio
Summary: Hell is other people
1. The End

He had never really thought about what might happen after he died. Heaven, hell…these things were for mortal men, superstitious, cowering, impotent fools who believed in the inevitability of death just like they believed in love and in each other.

Long, long ago, when he was a frail, dirty child, he asked Mrs. Cole, the woman who ran the orphanage, where his mother and father were, and she simply told him they were dead and that he should try not to think of it too much. But he lay awake trembling night after night, imagining that formless dark which would inevitably seize him. It was impenetrable, unknowable, just like his parents, just like his "caretakers" (even as a five-year-old, Tom Riddle was well-acquainted with irony and wore it like armor) and the other rotten little bastards that surrounded him and pestered and teased him. He could not see anything beneath their cruel masks and he believed them to be filled with the dark void.

He swore later that he would become unknowable and beat the void by becoming it. He decided that there would be no after to his life.

God, what a bloody idiot he was.

He had meticulously divided his soul seven ways, but that little boy had fused it back together without even knowing it, without even trying…or maybe Voldemort had himself. Technically, he'd killed himself, when you really thought about it. So, there was that. He held close this very small consolation, which meant to him that he had not truly been bested in the end.

It turned out he actually had been quite evil (another concept he previously presumed to be superstition). Who could've known? Of course he would go to Hell. That's what the void was. But there were no flames, no red scaly demons. That wouldn't have been so bad, really. That, he could have dealt with that.


	2. No Exit

"This is ridiculous. Absolutely, completely ridiculous. Lord Voldemort is not dead. He is simply…waiting for His opportunity. Lord Voldemort has bested death before and why shouldn't He be able to now?" In his head, Voldemort always capitalized his own pronouns.

"Oh God, here he goes again. Shuddup! Stop talking about yourself in third person, you bloody twat!" Sirius Black snapped.

"Avada Kedavra!" Voldemort hissed, menacingly brandishing his makeshift wand (which was really a whittled down stick) at the man, but nothing happened. Not even a single spark. At this, Sirius Black laughed…guffawed, really. Severus Snape, sitting in the far corner of the room with Lily Evans, rolled his eyes, and they were joined by other assorted giggling across the room.

"Oooo look! Voldy's on the prowl! Everyone run! Run for your lives!" the Weasley boy yelled, throwing his arms up in the air. Then, he snapped his fingers theatrically. "Oh, wait a tic…"

Voldemort gave a piercing glare at all of them, and clutched the wand. He crossed his arms against his chest and muttered, "Lord Voldemort will kill you all as soon as He figures out how."

He longed for solitude, for one precious moment of silence. These people were always smiling and laughing and chattering; it made his skin itch. Sometimes—he couldn't believe it—sometimes, they danced, two-stepping freely and wildly around the campfires they built. Even Severus Snape was prone to smiling in this wretched place. Occasionally, they would sit together roasting marshmallows on long thin sticks (plucked from the ground, for God's sakes). They squished the fat, bloated puffs between a layer of chocolate and graham cracker and happily shoved it all down their gullets.

It was disgusting. In life, he had never indulged in such sweets. They were very…sticky…sometimes, gooey. They reminded him of the orphanage, where he would survive on stolen candy and chocolate for days at a time. As he grew older, he lost his appetite completely and stuck to clean, somewhat bland, foods: rice, bread, fruits, steamed vegetables. By the time he rose to power, Lord Voldemort was a strict vegan. He never ate here, as he was never hungry. He drank a lot though, downing whiskey by the bottle.

When Voldemort managed to sequester himself away, he was besot with voices in his head, screams and moans that belonged to people he'd murdered. He could identify each and every voice through the roar. When he weighed his options carefully, he decided the headaches were worse than the feeling that his skin wanted slither away and join the other party.

It was a village, this afterlife: a sunny little clearing with darling little cottages and cute little shops and quaint little pubs. It curiously resembled Hogsmeade. In fact, he could see Hogwarts in the distance, beyond the hills. When he first arrived, he would often hike there, but after a distance, through some powerful enchantment, he ended up disheveled and bruised back at the beginning of the village.

Voldemort was sitting at the bar in the Hogshead, drinking a pint, when Albus Dumbledore sat down next to him. He looked almost fifty years younger; wrinkles had vanished and his red hair was thick and lustrous just a hint of silver. "Hello, Tom. How are you today?"

"Name's Voldemort, Dumbledore. Say it with me: Vol. De. Mort."

Dumbledore chuckled. Voldemort punched him in the face, but it hit something like a solid wall of air right in front of Dumbledore's crooked nose. "Ah. Not so well then."

"What do you mean by that, anyway? What do you mean, 'today'? You ask me that everyday, as if something exciting might have happened. But nothing ever does. It's just One. Long. Goddamn. Day." Voldemort waved his hand through the air as he said this, as if his words were an orchestra and he was conducting. Then it felt heavy all of a sudden, so he dropped it back onto the bar.

He followed it with his head, leaning on an outstretched arm, lazily tracing his forearm where his dark mark should have been. Voldemort gave a heavy sigh, flopping his head over, gazing into the mirror behind the bar at his young looking face; he no longer had his snake-like visage, with slitted red eyes and pale, leathery skin. Noble, he thought that face was, a conqueror's face. Now he looked handsome, if a bit weary, with dark hair and chiseled cheekbones leading up to dark eyes, surrounded with tiny crow's feet. They were barely there, but to him it was like staring at the cracking, barren earth. It was the face of mortal decay.

"Oh, Tom," Dumbledore sighed. "You should try to find a little peace. You'll be here for a long time." But Voldemort had passed out. Dumbledore patted him on the shoulder, smiled a little, and poured himself a drink.

* * *

Eventually he decided that maybe, if he killed himself, it would reverse everything. Sacrifice, that's what lead to this whole thing, right? Harry Potter's self-fucking-sacrifice, that noble little prick. Perhaps if he sacrificed himself, he would spring back to his old body; even living within a moldering corpse would do and he would eventually restore himself to glory. 

He filled his pockets with palm-sized rocks and walked into the lake, breathing in lungfuls of water as he sank. In the end, he just sat there at the bottom of the lake, watching mermaids swim around, doing all those tribal mermaid things. At least they looked appropriately somber and sullen for the severity of his situation.

He stuck his head in an oven and tied a plastic bag over his headed, but it quickly became uncomfortably moist and hot.

He slit his wrists and throat with a broken shard of glass, but kept bleeding and bleeding, walking around everywhere covered in crusted red flakes.

"Clean yourself, Lord Voldemort. It's disgusting," said Severus Snape, after many days.

"Yeah, you smell something awful," added Sirius.

Which wasn't true. No matter what, he never had that greasy mortal stink in this place, which was the one good thing. He bathed three times daily when was (oh how painful, the past tense) alive. Voldemort detested bodily fluids. He vividly remembered bedding a young, beautiful Slytherin girl as a teenager, and the slick sheen of sweat that covered them as they rubbed together like dogs. It was so much less than he'd expected; the payoff was just a strangled feeling in his throat, a buzzing cloudy headache, and the shuddering release of semen.

Later, Albus helped him bandage the cuts.

He hanged himself, and kept hanging for hours and hours, swaying merrily in the breeze.

"All in all, he's a rather sad case, don't you think? Poor bloke," Remus Lupin said, shaking his head as he glanced over at Voldemort's swinging body.

"Poor bloke? Murderous, conniving, shamelessly evil bloke, that's more like it," said James Potter.

"Oh, now, James," Lily said. "He's obviously torn up about his life."

"Come on!" James and Sirius said in unison.

"This is Voldemort, we're talking about! He killed you! And ME!" James said.

"And me," said Snape.

"Me too," came an unrecognizable voice in the distance.

"Me too," said another one.

"Yeah, he's killed about a fourth of the people here!" James said.

"Well, that's all over. I mean, he can't hurt anyone now, can he?"

"He hurts my head with all his bloody whining."

"Yeah, can you annoy someone to death? Even if they're already dead?"

Lord Voldemort cut himself down and marched over to them. "No one pities Lord Voldemort! I am the most powerful wizard in history! Salazar Slytherin's blood runs through my veins! You're all mudbloods, blood traitors, pathetic weak animals lead meekly to slaughter! You deserved it!" Voldemort stormed off to the bar to drink himself into a coma.

"God, he's pathetic. To think I used to idolize him," Snape said.

Lily clucked her tongue in a sympathetic sort of way. "Poor bloke."


	3. Nausea

Some days later (who knew how many? Voldemort had stopped counting awhile ago), Dumbledore once again joined him at the bar. He wondered why Dumbledore did not abjectly despise him. Probably, Voldemort decided, it was because he was no longer a threat to Dumbledore's power. That must've been it.

"Single malt scotch on the rocks, if you please," Dumbledore said to the bartender.

"What do you want, old man? Come to torture me with more of your morality fairy tales?"

"As much as I love my family, sometimes I simply want some different company and a stiff drink, Tom." Voldemort didn't even bother to correct him. Nothing he did made any difference in this place. He was powerless.

"Oh, you're not powerless. You're just having…quite a different experience."

Oh. He had accidentally said that last part out loud. Voldemort coughed loudly. He wasn't embarrassed; no, Lord Voldemort _did not_ get embarrassed. "Is that so? Tell me, wise Merlin, what is that?"

"It's called emotion."

"See, I knew you were going to say that."

"Hm," Dumbledore said, sipping his drink.

"I just want to be alone. Is that too much to ask? But instead, I'm being punished with all this…screaming, all these voices…sniveling, moaning, begging last words…it's a goddamn Greek chorus up here," he said, tapping on his forehead for emphasis. "Who's doing this? Who bewitched me? What curse is it? How come I've never heard about it? It's quite effective."

Dumbledore cleared his throat. "Well, I suppose you must know what my answer is going to be."

Voldemort looked Dumbledore in the eyes. "What? Tell me."

Dumbledore looked back at him incisively, searching his face like he was trying to decide whether or not to answer. It made Voldemort feel like Dumbledore was scooping out chunks flesh from his chest with a dull knife. "It's guilt, Tom."

Voldemort banged his head on the bar counter so hard it cracked the wood. "I hate you so much."

"I know. But I love you."

"Just fuck off, you senile old git. Why don't you go play naughty with some schoolboys? I understand you enjoy that. I'm sure there's some I've killed running around."

But Dumbledore sat there quietly, sipping his scotch, until he finished the glass. Then he chewed on the ice for a while, thoughtfully, like he was working something out. Voldemort ground his teeth and snapped, "Stop that."

Dumbledore stood and said, "Come see me some time, Tom. I'll be around."

* * *

There was this owl, a beautiful snowy owl, which came around when he was sitting outside reading. He'd taken up Muggle literature and philosophy of late. Loads of it was complete shit, but he liked this Sartre fellow, and Nietzsche too. Anyway, this owl would fly up to him, perch on his shoulder like it wanted to be his friend. It was vile. He missed Nagini. 

"Go away, you bloody pest," and he pushed it off of his shoulder. It inched back towards him, hesitantly, and started playfully pecking on his foot. He playfully kicked it far across the yard. But it always came back. Eventually, he just let it.

It was sitting on his shoulder and Voldemort was reading when Sirius Black passed by and did a sort of double take. He left, then returned with Remus Lupin, then the Weasley boy, and more and more of them came to gawk at him. Finally, when he could stand it no longer, he said, "I realize I'm glorious to gaze upon, but can I help you?"

Sirius Black looked amazed, shell-shocked, and about to fall into paroxysms of laughter, all at once. "Uh…well, my _lord_, we're just a little curious about your new friend there."

"This stupid bird? It won't go away. It's rather like you lot, in that way." He glared suspiciously at the bird.

Sirius Black started laughing so hard that he started choking. "That's—that's brilliant—oh God, I can't even—this is just too—" and he walked away.

Remus Lupin then opened his mouth, closed it, opened it, then followed Black.

Finally, it was the Weasley who blurted, "That's Harry Potter's owl!"

"Goddamnit," Voldemort muttered.

The owl went "who? who?" and pecked affectionately at his ear.

* * *

Dumbledore began to regularly meet him at the Hogshead. They didn't speak too much. Or, rather, Voldemort didn't. Dumbledore, however, chatted congenially about who know's what…anything that floated into his gaping swiss-cheese brain: the weather ("Lovely day today, isn't it Tom? I think I might fancy a little sunbathing by the lake."); his sister ("It's just wonderful to see Ariana so happy. She paints now, you know."); some new sweet he had concocted ("I think I shall call it a Bell Dandy Candy. It's lemon with just a hint of cherry, and once you eat it, you chime and ring for about an hour."). 

"How do you people stand it?" Voldemort asked quietly at the bar one night, interrupting Dumbledore in the middle of a story about three brothers.

"What's that?"

"How do you stand it? This—this—all this internal noise…the surging in your chest…the flashes of hot and cold…the bumps that creep up your arms…it's maddening." Voldemort held his head between his hands, lacing his fingers through his hair, digging them into his head.

"It's…an acquired taste?"

"Well how can I unaquire it?"

"You can't." Voldemort groaned. "Like everything here, it's there to stay."

"And another thing: how is it you're all doing magic? I see you, sparking up fires, conjuring silly little things, apparating. I saw James Potter and Sirius Black flying on brooms, playing Quidditch the other day."

"Oh really? Who won?"

"They weren't playing by any rules! They weren't even keeping score!" Voldemort gnashed his teeth and snarled, "That's not the point! I can't even light my wand. I can't do a damn bit of magic. Why?"

Dumbledore lightly began sliding his fingers in a figure-eight pattern over the rings of water left by his glass.

"Tell me! It's you, isn't it? You cursed me!"

Dumbledore shook his head. "You're not going to want to hear this."

Voldemort slammed his hand down, eyes ablaze. "I've never wanted to hear ANYTHING you have to say, old man, but it's never bloody well stopped you before, has it?"

Dumbledore paused, sipping his drink thoughtfully. "Tom, do you remember what I've been telling you about magic all these years?"

"What part? You talk so much. I tune most of it out."

"The part about the most powerful magic."

"No, no, no, no, no," he chanted, punctuating each "no" with a sharp bang of his head against the counter.

"That's really not going to help anything, you know." He paused again, waiting for Voldemort to stop, and then continued. "It's the only magic that works here. It has to be based in love."

Voldemort stood up sharply and threw his bottle against the wall as hard as he could, thirsty for the satisfying crash and shatter.

It bounced lightly onto the floor. He gave an incoherent scream of frustration and rage, turned on his heel and walked out.


	4. Les Jeux sont faits

One evening, on his nightly walk, he found himself at Dumbledore's door. Worn out, he knocked lightly on the door.

"Tom! Wonderful to see you!" Dumbledore said.

Voldemort coughed. "Well then, I was wondering, that is, I thought…did you have a quill I could borrow?" He stared at the ground, scratching his head.

"Of course. Come in. Can I get you anything? Jelly slug? Chocolate frog?" It seemed strangely carnivorous how much Dumbledore relished eating small, animated, candy animals.

"Have you got any tea?"

Dumbledore smiled. "I'm sure I can dig some up, somewhere. Have a seat."

In the sitting room, a girl sat on the floor painting. She looked at him when he sat down and stuck out her hand. "Oh, hello. I'm Ariana."

Voldemort nodded and said nothing.

"Well. Who are you then?" she asked expectantly.

He took her hand, conjuring from somewhere deep inside that winning, superficial charm that he had once possessed. "Oh. Yes. I'm—Tom." Voldemort didn't know what possessed him; it had been one of those horrible impulses. He hated that sometimes, now, he spoke without thinking first. He didn't control where his conversations went. His voice seemed to have a mind of its own. But he knew she'd died before he'd come to power and he didn't really feel up to explaining his whole grand history to her, and reluctantly, he thought for once it might be nice to be someone besides the Dark Lord.

They lapsed into silence. He watched her careful watercolor strokes, light green and blue and yellow as she filled in the background, then looked around to the art hanging on the walls. Landscapes mostly, in watercolor, but there were some oil-color impressionistic scenes of laughing people by the campfire, viewed from the perspective of one looking out of a window. He liked that he couldn't quite make out their faces.

"Did you paint all these?"

"Why, do you like them?" she asked excitedly.

"Yes, actually. You're…you're quite good."

"Thank you! Albus always goes on and on about how I'm so gifted, but it's really nice to have an outside perspective."

"Yes, it can be." Voldemort paused and cleared his throat.

"So, Tom," Ariana said, glancing over her shoulder at him, "how did you die?" She asked this very casually, as if it were not the most piercing, horrible question she could have asked.

"I was killed," he replied shortly.

"Me too," she chirped. "My brother and his friend."

He raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"But it was partly me too. I was quite unstable. Couldn't control myself. Always had these bursts of magic coming out of me when I got excited. They were having a huge row, and it just happened."

"Aren't you angry?"

Ariana gave a tinkling little laugh. "That's silly. What's the point? It was so long ago, anyway. I expect I'd be very exhausted if I worried about all the wrongs done to me in life."

Voldemort snorted a little as Dumbledore came back in with a tray. "Ariana, Tom. You two seem to be hitting it off," he said as he poured three cups. Ariana nodded happily.

"You should bring him around more often, Albus," Ariana said.

"That's up to Tom."

Voldemort looked away. "Will you stay for dinner?" Ariana asked.

He was quiet for a moment, staring at the campfire painting. "Alright. May as well."

And so Voldemort sat with Dumbledore and his sister, sipping tea out of a delicate china cup.

"You know, I have something I've been meaning to give you." Dumbledore stood and walked over to his towering bookshelf and pulled out a very old, decaying book.

He handed it to Voldemort. "What is it?" he asked as he opened it.

"It's a book of puzzles. Anagrams, riddles, that sort of thing. Written in the 15th century by a wizard named Balthasar Casper. He was a little mad; there are quite a few digressive essays about specific meanings passed down from higher structure of the universe which can be divined through anagrams. He tends to think of magic as a thinking organism. But I thought you might like a diversion; something to occupy your time."

Voldemort was shocked, to say the least. He _had_ always liked this sort of thing, been obsessed with it as a youth. After a moment, he managed to summon a plain "thank you." He quickly became engrossed in the book and before he knew it, hours had passed and there was a knock on the door.

James and Lily Potter, with Sirius Black and Remus Lupin in tow, arrived first; Lily hugged Dumbledore and James shook his hand, handing him a bottle of wine.

"Ariana, so lovely to—" She stopped abruptly, spotting Voldemort, and they all stood there, gaping. "Dumbledore, might we speak with you for a moment?" They herded him into the kitchen.

"What—what on Earth, Albus?" Sirius hissed. "What the bloody fucking hell?"

"Yes?"

"Don't, Albus. Don't play the fool. You should have warned us."

"I have always believed in second chances."

"Don't you think this might be a little ill-advised?" Remus Lupin replied carefully.

"Yes, I've considered that. You're welcome, of course, to leave." Dumbledore returned to the sitting room. Voldemort pretended he hadn't been listening. The fierce whispering in the kitchen devolved into screaming. Eventually they returned, with Black and Potter seething, and Lily and Lupin looking thoughtful.

One by one, they arrived: Amelia Bones, Mathilda Bagshot, Weasley, Snape and finally, the fat old witch from whom he'd stolen Hufflepuff's cup, each bearing a small gift for Dumbledore, each pulling Dumbledore aside, whispering furiously, and returning with a humbled, harried look.

They sat as far away from Voldemort as possible, making awkward small talk, glancing strangely at Ariana as she babbled in his direction. Alternately, he cursed Dumbledore for this devious plan, admired its cleverness, and relished the power his mere presence was exerting—finally, the chance to make them jump, to affect them, to make them afraid. He had not had such a high since the final battle at Hogwarts, when he was on the brink of ultimate success. But at the same time, it was a little bit empty, a little less all-consuming; he did not linger on those thoughts.


End file.
